This five-week National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for School Teachers, directed by Dr. Gerard M. Koot, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, will investigate how a region of northwest Europe, centered on the North Sea, acquired the characteristics that historians have labeled modern. We will study how the economy of the Dutch Republic rose to preeminence in the new European world economy of the seventeenth century, how Britain acquired this supremacy in the eighteenth century, and how it transformed itself to become an industrial nation. The seminar will meet at the Institute for Historical Research in London for the first week and then at Webster University, Leiden, The Netherlands, for four weeks. NEH will provide a stipend of $3900 toward expenses. Applications are due on March 4, 2013. For an application and a full explanation of the seminar, go to: http://www1.umassd.edu/euro/ For a mailed copy, contact Sue Foley, sfoley@umassd.edu or call 508-999-8301. For further information, write Gerard Koot gkoot@umassd.edu or call 508 994 3145.